Do Not Call List by Country and How a Calling Team Honours It

This is general information, not legal advice. Registers, prices and procedures change; confirm with the register operator before a campaign.

National do not call list registers

The Auto Dialer found the same two-layer design in every market it reviewed on 4 October 2026. The first layer is a national register run by or for the government, which people join once and which binds every telemarketer. The second layer is each company's own list of people who told that company to stop, which binds only that company but usually takes effect faster and lasts a long time; in the US a company must keep such a request for five years. The registers differ mainly in how a business checks them and how old that check may be. The United States and Canada both set a ceiling of 31 days on the age of the list version a caller relies on. Australia treats a list washed within the last 30 days as a defence. The UK gives a newly registered number 28 days before a call to it counts as a breach.

National do not call list comparison

Company do not call list

A national register only covers people who signed up to it. Everyone else who says "please stop calling" goes on your own list, and in several countries the law says so in terms. In the US the FCC's TCPA rules expect a written policy available on demand, staff trained in it, the request recorded when it is made, and calls stopped within ten business days. The ICO lists keeping your own "do not call" list among its expectations for UK callers. Canada's Telecommunications Act makes exempt callers, such as charities and parties, keep their own list too, even though the national one does not bind them; how that plays out for campaign volunteers is on the political dialer page. The safest habit everywhere is the same: record it on the call, before the next number rings.

Do not call list scrubbing before import

The Auto Dialer does not query any register, so the check happens before the list reaches the app. A workable order:

1. Export the leads for the campaign to CSV using the shared lead filter.
2. Check that file through the register for each country on it, and note the date.
3. Keep a registered number only where you hold consent or a qualifying relationship, and write the basis into a custom field.
4. Import the cleaned file; it becomes a list of its own. If you imported the wrong file, deleting that list removes only the leads it added.
5. During calls, set a "Do not call" status on anyone who objects and add them to excluded numbers, which keeps them out of automation and backup.
6. Repeat the check before the freshness limit for that country runs out.

International do not call list example

Round figures, invented to show the method; this is not a customer's campaign.

An operations lead at an online training company in Dublin has 1,200 course enquiries: 500 from the US, 400 from the UK and 300 from Canada. She splits them into three files. The US file is compared with registry data bought that week, the UK file is screened against TPS and CTPS, and the Canadian file against a current DNCL copy. Most matches enquired recently enough to keep: inside 3 months in the US and 6 months in Canada. In the UK, though, regulation 21 has no enquiry exemption, so registered UK numbers stay only where the person specifically agreed to calls. Each country's file is imported as its own list, named with the check date, and re-checked each month the campaign runs. Calling-hour detail for each country is on the USA, UK and Canada pages.

National do not call list limits

A register check does not make a call lawful on its own (whether an auto dialer is legal is a wider question): consent rules, calling hours and recorded-voice rules still apply, and US states keep their own lists and rules that this page has not researched. The Auto Dialer is a calling and records tool, not a scrubbing service, so a telemarketing team calling cold lists at volume should pick a platform with register checks built in. Australian washing is covered in more depth on dialer for Australia, India's preference rules on the TRAI calling rules page, and the effect of repeat attempts on complaints under auto redial. Lead filters and imports are explained under how to call a list of numbers.